Confidence and Charisma: How to Present Like Tony Robbins

November 26, 2014

If there's anyone who understands the power of stage presence, it's Tony Robbins. The self-help coach has built his business empire -- which includes books, a charity foundation and a reality TV show -- off of his speeches, whether they be infomercials, TED Talks or learning seminars.

Robbins’ skill as a storyteller is one of the main ways he can grab and hold a crowd’s interest, inspire them and motivate them to act. His personal magnetism and the certainty and confidence he seems to radiate add to the power of the connections he makes. Once he has his listeners’ attention, he’s able to convey big concepts, one small “chunk” at a time.

Since he offers practical answers to questions about life and happiness, common to almost everyone, keeping listeners engaged is simple. He not only “hits them where they live,” he arms them to hit back at life’s assaults, with a new hope of winning.

So what are the takeaways here, for you as a presenter?

-Gain Confidence: Work to develop and project an air of competence and certainty. How to do that? You need to find out what you are good at and what you know. If you talk about subjects that you know a lot about, you will feel more confident. Use open-ended questions in order to engage your audience and make for a more informal dialogue.

-Keep it Bite-Sized: Capsulize the key elements of your messages – break them up into easily absorbable and concrete examples. You can use analogies or common examples from your daily life to make complex theory easier to understand.

-Be Expressive: Deliver them with passion and enthusiasm. Smile and don’t have a monotone voice. Speak out loud and clear, and mean what you say.

It'll take some practice, but if any of us can master a portion of what Robbins does, we'll be on our way to striking gold.

Toke Kruse is a serial entrepreneur with more than 10 startups to his credit. He is the owner of Slideshop.com, a major provider of PowerPoint presentation templates. He’s also founder of Billy’s Billing, creators of small business accounting software in plain English. Connect on Twitter here and here.